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Legally they could have ignored it. Then taken their knocks in the next GE.

mike_hearn 3y ago
They did that. That was the constitutional crisis that occurred after the next election, in which all the major parties promised to respect the referendum and implement the vote, thus ensuring it was fought mostly on domestic issues. Then after being elected large numbers of MPs announced that in fact they weren't going to let the UK leave, and wanted to impose a second "People's Vote". These MPs had done exactly what some people on this thread are asking for: they agreed to a referendum and then decided they didn't like the result so they wouldn't obey it. What happened next seems to have been largely memory holed: Johnson kicked the rebels out of the Conservative party (Labour did not), sending his party from having a majority to deep minority. Parliament then went entirely rogue and attempted to take over the Brexit process from the government in order to directly kill it. Johnson asked for a new election to take the mess back to the people, and the rogue MPs denied that too. They knew full well they had directly stabbed the electorate in the back and they'd all lose their jobs at the next GE as a result, so they just ... refused to hold a GE. This was by far the biggest constitutional crisis the UK has had in my lifetime. Representative democracy is built on the basic assumption that if politicians say they believe in X, campaign on X and then get voted in because of X, that they will actually vote for X in Parliament. If large numbers of MPs claim they will support something and are just baldly lying, democracy dies. And that's what happened. The crisis was ended only by a stroke of luck: the head of the Liberal Democrats became so delusional she began to drink the rebel MPs own kool-aid, and think that the population actually supported their desire for a second People's Vote. After blocking a new election for a long period, she decided to vote with Johnson's remaining loyal MPs to trigger one, at which point all the rebels including her were wiped out. Every single one lost their seats. So, what you ask for actually happened. It didn't work because the British people voted the same way and for the same things they did in the referendum.
- dfawcus 3y ago
  Except I was not asking for it, simply making an observation. If the MPs actually wanted to be successful in thwarting it, they should have blocked the sending of the Article 50 notification. i.e. either placed conditions on the notification Act, or denied it passing. My view is that they were too craven (or stupid) at the time to show their true convictions. Anyway, the faffing about was a different Parliament, the withdrawal was sent 29th March 2017, then we had a GE and May lost her majority. I'd not view any of those "rogue parliament" events as a constitutional crisis, they're representatives, not delegates. As has been pointed out before, we have no legitimate expectations from anything an MP says to be elected. Our only recourse is to subsequently vote them out. A constitutional crisis would only really have happened if the Scottish MPs (possibly with MSPs) had acted to thwart things - i.e. end the Union; but the then SNP folks were (and still are) too happy in their gravy. As to an earlier 2019 GE, with the FTPA they were not obliged to do so. Yes their faffing about was annoying, and I take the view that folks were just sick of them dithering, hence the 2019 GE result. However, one should not really speak of the UK being a democracy. We (well strictly England, as the Scottish rules are generally ignored) are an absolute monarchy where parliament has wrested away most of the power, and handed it to the cabinet, which really means the PM. (The Scottish monarchy was never absolute.) As has been observed in the past, the UK is essentially an elected dictatorship, which depends upon those in power being "good guys". Recent events have shown how fragile that is, yet still it has not been (and probably will not be) reformed.
  - mike_hearn 3y ago
    > Yes their faffing about was annoying, and I take the view that folks were just sick of them dithering, hence the 2019 GE result. What happened was extraordinary and had not been seen before. Calling it mere "faffing around" suggests you either don't remember those events fully, or perhaps, wished the conspirators had succeeded. Again - all the MPs who engaged in that so-called faffing around were evicted from their seats at the next election and there were IIRC more than 50 of them. The Lib Dems were the ringleaders, and voters reduced them to a rump. In particular their leader was booted from Parliament. The citizens showed exactly what they thought of this "faffing around" and it wasn't pretty for those who did it. > the UK is essentially an elected dictatorship That's a contradiction, isn't it? If you really want to lawyer things, the UK isn't essentially anything at all. There is not really a written constitution, the country just makes it up as it goes along. That means the constitution is whatever people think it should be. And pretty clearly, from the brutal destruction the Lib Dems caught in the last GE, the people think that MPs should meet basic standards like not baldly lying about their intentions, not attempting to overthrow their own government, not switching to parties with polar opposite key policies and not refusing to hold elections. Any system of government is defined by what people expect to happen, what people actually do, and ultimately what the army does. A democracy lives only as long as whoever wins doesn't immediately take over the secret police and execute all their opponents. If a UK political party were to try and do that, it would be right and proper for people to be outraged and enact extreme severe repercussions on those who were doing it. The fact that technically tradition says Parliament could vote for such thing really just doesn't matter at all, and British history is full of de facto changes to the role and powers of Parliament. Indeed, EU membership was exactly that. Lawyers will tell you that under the "unwritten constitution" Parliament may not bind itself, i.e. one party can't pass a law that forbids the next party from passing a different law. Yet EU membership did exactly that for decades.

They did that. That was the constitutional crisis that occurred after the next election, in which all the major parties promised to respect the referendum and implement the vote, thus ensuring it was fought mostly on domestic issues. Then after being elected large numbers of MPs announced that in fact they weren't going to let the UK leave, and wanted to impose a second "People's Vote". These MPs had done exactly what some people on this thread are asking for: they agreed to a referendum and then decided they didn't like the result so they wouldn't obey it. What happened next seems to have been largely memory holed: Johnson kicked the rebels out of the Conservative party (Labour did not), sending his party from having a majority to deep minority. Parliament then went entirely rogue and attempted to take over the Brexit process from the government in order to directly kill it. Johnson asked for a new election to take the mess back to the people, and the rogue MPs denied that too. They knew full well they had directly stabbed the electorate in the back and they'd all lose their jobs at the next GE as a result, so they just ... refused to hold a GE. This was by far the biggest constitutional crisis the UK has had in my lifetime. Representative democracy is built on the basic assumption that if politicians say they believe in X, campaign on X and then get voted in because of X, that they will actually vote for X in Parliament. If large numbers of MPs claim they will support something and are just baldly lying, democracy dies. And that's what happened. The crisis was ended only by a stroke of luck: the head of the Liberal Democrats became so delusional she began to drink the rebel MPs own kool-aid, and think that the population actually supported their desire for a second People's Vote. After blocking a new election for a long period, she decided to vote with Johnson's remaining loyal MPs to trigger one, at which point all the rebels including her were wiped out. Every single one lost their seats. So, what you ask for actually happened. It didn't work because the British people voted the same way and for the same things they did in the referendum.

dfawcus 3y ago
Except I was not asking for it, simply making an observation. If the MPs actually wanted to be successful in thwarting it, they should have blocked the sending of the Article 50 notification. i.e. either placed conditions on the notification Act, or denied it passing. My view is that they were too craven (or stupid) at the time to show their true convictions. Anyway, the faffing about was a different Parliament, the withdrawal was sent 29th March 2017, then we had a GE and May lost her majority. I'd not view any of those "rogue parliament" events as a constitutional crisis, they're representatives, not delegates. As has been pointed out before, we have no legitimate expectations from anything an MP says to be elected. Our only recourse is to subsequently vote them out. A constitutional crisis would only really have happened if the Scottish MPs (possibly with MSPs) had acted to thwart things - i.e. end the Union; but the then SNP folks were (and still are) too happy in their gravy. As to an earlier 2019 GE, with the FTPA they were not obliged to do so. Yes their faffing about was annoying, and I take the view that folks were just sick of them dithering, hence the 2019 GE result. However, one should not really speak of the UK being a democracy. We (well strictly England, as the Scottish rules are generally ignored) are an absolute monarchy where parliament has wrested away most of the power, and handed it to the cabinet, which really means the PM. (The Scottish monarchy was never absolute.) As has been observed in the past, the UK is essentially an elected dictatorship, which depends upon those in power being "good guys". Recent events have shown how fragile that is, yet still it has not been (and probably will not be) reformed.
- mike_hearn 3y ago
  > Yes their faffing about was annoying, and I take the view that folks were just sick of them dithering, hence the 2019 GE result. What happened was extraordinary and had not been seen before. Calling it mere "faffing around" suggests you either don't remember those events fully, or perhaps, wished the conspirators had succeeded. Again - all the MPs who engaged in that so-called faffing around were evicted from their seats at the next election and there were IIRC more than 50 of them. The Lib Dems were the ringleaders, and voters reduced them to a rump. In particular their leader was booted from Parliament. The citizens showed exactly what they thought of this "faffing around" and it wasn't pretty for those who did it. > the UK is essentially an elected dictatorship That's a contradiction, isn't it? If you really want to lawyer things, the UK isn't essentially anything at all. There is not really a written constitution, the country just makes it up as it goes along. That means the constitution is whatever people think it should be. And pretty clearly, from the brutal destruction the Lib Dems caught in the last GE, the people think that MPs should meet basic standards like not baldly lying about their intentions, not attempting to overthrow their own government, not switching to parties with polar opposite key policies and not refusing to hold elections. Any system of government is defined by what people expect to happen, what people actually do, and ultimately what the army does. A democracy lives only as long as whoever wins doesn't immediately take over the secret police and execute all their opponents. If a UK political party were to try and do that, it would be right and proper for people to be outraged and enact extreme severe repercussions on those who were doing it. The fact that technically tradition says Parliament could vote for such thing really just doesn't matter at all, and British history is full of de facto changes to the role and powers of Parliament. Indeed, EU membership was exactly that. Lawyers will tell you that under the "unwritten constitution" Parliament may not bind itself, i.e. one party can't pass a law that forbids the next party from passing a different law. Yet EU membership did exactly that for decades.